Understanding why the Christianity-science divide is important

Sunday

Mike Hardee doesn't lose a wink of sleep because some scientists call his religious beliefs into question.

The 52-year-old firefighter and Church of God member said his faith is unwavering - even if evolution is said to disprove biblical teaching about creation.

"If I'm right, those other guys are going to be in trouble," he said, referring to eternal torment. "If they're right, I'm just going to turn to dust and be fertilizer."

But some Christians are concerned.

Some 300 years since the Enlightenment, when reason rebelled against faith, and almost 100 years since the Scopes trial brought the teaching of evolution to the national consciousness, the tug-of-war continues in the form of evolution-vs.-creationism book wars and lawsuits over the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools.

The ruling body of the Church of England became so worried that Christians may feel compelled to choose sides, and possibly fall from faith, that it passed a motion earlier this month affirming the compatibility of religion and science.

But does that academic disagreement really matter to everyday people?

It should, according to two very different kinds of Christians.

One takes the Bible at face value, believing God created the world in six solar days and rested on the seventh, just as it says in the first chapter of Genesis. Eroding that belief can lead some to lose faith in Scripture and eventually abandon their faith.

"One man I know said he quit going to church after high school because it did not have an answer to evolution," said Richard Overman, president of Creation Education Resources, a Middleburg-based ministry that promotes the literal interpretation of biblical creation.

The other takes a more metaphorical approach to the biblical account, believing instead that God's fingerprints can be found in the theory of evolution.

The faithful "must do away with simple, straightforward formulae and be comfortable with nuance" when considering how evolution and biblical creation overlap, said Charles Foster, British author of "The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin."

'A spiritual battle'

To Overman, Scripture is clear: The Earth was created precisely as described in Genesis, which, he said, makes the planet more than 6,000 years old.

"One day is one day, not eons" as some Christians say, he said.

"If you read the Bible and you take it at face value, you get some very clear meaning from it," Overman said. "So what Satan does is he tries to convince Christians and non-Christians that's it's not true, [and] he does that by trying to use science."

Overman, who leads fossil-hunting trips and lectures church and home school groups about creation science, said he is most often asked to square dinosaurs with his theological views.

That's easy, he said: Dinosaurs existed, were on Noah's ark, and went extinct like any other species within the past six millennia.

The real issue isn't whether T-Rex existed but how it's used to undermine creationism, which in turn could erode belief in other biblical tenets, such as the divinity of Christ or that marriage should be between one man and one woman, Overman said.

"It's a spiritual battle," he said of the debate.

Need to 'embrace nuance'

For Foster, however, faith suffers most in that either-or battle between what he described as "the extreme right wing factions" of the science-versus-faith debate.

"Young Earth" creationists ignore the growing body of evidence supporting some elements of natural selection while hard-core atheists are "misrepresenting the scientific record [because] they can't cope with nuance," Foster said.

The nuance they overlook includes altruistic behaviors in various species that point to a loving intelligence behind creation that contradicts the narrow and cruel "survival of the fittest" view of evolution, Foster said.

Seeing evidence of altruism helps a person to "continue to believe that God is good" while embracing scientific discoveries.

If Christians believe their God is one of truth, they should "have a passionate interest in science and the Bible."

'God is bigger than all of this'

The Rev. James A. Hull, senior pastor at North Jacksonville Church of God, doesn't go "berserko-crazy" over the issue because science will eventually prove biblical teachings to be true. He cited a verse in the Hebrew scriptures referring to "the circle of the Earth" - more than a thousand years before scientists concluded that the Earth is round.

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